


leave it to beaver: redux

by orphan_account



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Brother/Sister Incest, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-24
Updated: 2007-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-22 21:04:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16605425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: michael, he forgets, you see: the american dream of the cleavers was left behind in the '50s.





	leave it to beaver: redux

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [leave it to beaver: redux](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/432272) by falseeeyelashes. 



leave it where it can't remind us  
turn this all around behind us

( **turn into;**  yeah yeah yeahs)

 

* * *

 

It's about the things he tries not to remember.

You see, they're always the things he can't forget.

 

* * *

 

Domesticity comes in strange doses, a model home and plastic fruit.

His wife is buried far away and despite the sentimental streak he carries with a strange amount of pride, he does his best not to be reminded of this. George Michael doesn't speak of her either,  _for the best_ , they both might silently agree, and Michael will ruffle his son's hair.

"We move on," he'll try with a smile, but there's something a little sick about that. Tracy is dead, after all.

Sometimes, Lindsay will act like she doesn't remember her name. She will, instead, just say:  _your wife_.

Michael might glare. In the end, it's a comfort all the same. It's not like Lindsay is related to them, anyway.

 

* * *

 

Lindsay wears an apron and will cradle a mixing bowl in her arms. She has the wooden spoon and the cookie batter — from a bag with Betty Crocker on it, never from scratch — and she will stir.

Michael will stir, too.

The cookies taste like shit, some still raw in the center. He eats three anyway. He then spends the rest of the night on WebMd.com, verifying the symptoms of salmonella poisoning and the like, and more than pleased when he awakens the next three days still alive and free of any possible gastrointestinal disease.

She tries pancakes next. Her success is just as rousing as the cookies.

 

* * *

 

If a family ever existed more in need of psychiatric care or guidance, Michael Bluth would never care to meet them. This brood proves to be enough, and Michael? Michael himself is quite gifted at hiding whatever myriad assortment of neurotic and/or psychological tendencies he might possess.

There is the control freak factor, the paranoia that everyone in his family is out to get him (though these suspicions are never quite unfounded), and his peculiar incestuous leanings for his (adopted) twin sister.

"At least it's not an Oedipal complex," a shrink might shrug as Michael would lay back on the leather couch.

"Yeah," he would say, " _that_ , I can assure you, would never, ever be a possibility. Ever."

He sometimes dreams he's drowning. Other times he dreams of small dinosaurs, picking him apart, limb by severed limb. 

Yes, a therapist would have a field day with him. If only given the opportunity.

He steers clear of Tobias.

 

* * *

 

Michael merely tolerated Lindsay as a child; this, he recalls, almost vividly at times.

She was a girl and he was a boy and it took him quite awhile to outgrow that phase where all members of the alternate sex were either a) gross, or b) scary. Lindsay remained both, mainly the latter, clear through high school for him.

They grew up, of course. As did their issues, ever wider in scope, even further in depth.

 

* * *

 

They both married on Sundays, his occasion scattered with rain, unusual for California, while hers was blessed with sun and lack of cloud cover. 

He remembers this.

(He tries, yes, Michael  _tries_  to forget — valiant effort, he can hear her sneering — the way her fingers curled around his wrist, the way she pulled him closer. Her left hand had curled and her right hand slipped against his jawline, gripping tight. His hand found her waist, and she kissed him. Once.

If they were both children they might have both run away.)

Later — she disappeared to Boston and he burrowed deep in business. Her birthday cards (when she sent them), her Christmas cards were always a week too late, the New Year begun, and her name would be signed carefully, elegantly along the bottom.

She always had the messiest handwriting.

 

* * *

 

They meet in hallways, along closed doors.

The floorboards might creak.

The silk of her robe is always warm against his hand, and her mouth will always open, first. Sometimes she will stumble against his chest, and her legs might spread, and he'll commit it to memory — the way her eyes will flash, bright and open, as his fingers will slick against then  _in_  her, the way her breath might catch, the way she'll murmur along his neck, sliding up beneath his chin, always the same.

"Who would have thought?" she'll always say.

Michael will forget to answer.

 

* * *

 

Mornings yawn open with a promise of the new.

Michael will stretch, and try, "Maybe today."

Maybe.


End file.
